Prince of Persia (2008) Review

Naming your game after the long running series that it's a part of is a sure fire way to send a message to gamers screaming "REBOOT!".Now, that's not necessarily a bad thing, but games like this should be approached with some caution: obviously something has previously gone horrendously wrong to the point where the series was abandoned. But on the upside, if it's worth rebooting, then there's some definite quality at the heart of the franchise, waiting to be uncovered yet again.

Sure enough, POP 2008 is a reboot and it has little to do with the Sands of Time trilogy that came
before it. We have a new Prince adventuring through a new story in a new
Persian land threatened by a new antagonist, and aided by a new female
ally. However, nothing steps too far from the norm, and all the Prince of
Persia gameplay staples (acrobatics, combat, puzzle-solving) return.

Starting the game, a quick introduction to our brand new Prince - now an adventuring treasure hunter voiced excellently by Nolan North (which practically makes him a 5th Century BC Nathan Drake) - shows him lost in a sand storm, when he encounters a woman fleeing some guards.

This woman is Elika, who the Prince forms an alliance with, and who serves as a love interest for him. The two characters are likeable with interesting personalities and are excellently voice-acted; their relationship is well scripted and lends a warm feeling to the game despite the apocalyptic goings-on. Of course, Elika isn't just there to look pretty - she plays a key role in the plot, is vital during platforming and combat, and her Compass power helps you find your way around the world.

After this, a good little tutorial section sees players pursuing her through the desert cliffs, while being taught basic platforming and combat along the way. We reach a temple in the desert, where we witness the release of Ahriman, an evil deity who coats the land in Corruption and threatens the existence of the land. Now it’s down to the Prince and Elika to restore the land to its former glory, by cleansing each of the Fertile Grounds.

During this introductory section, players are undoubtedly going to realise that graphically
the game has taken a completely different direction. Prince of Persia
sports a cel-shaded art style, which, in my opinion, is absolutely
beautiful, making the game seem like a living watercolour painting.At the beginning of the game, the beauty of this cel shading may not be too apparent, as the world you're in is coated in Ahriman’s Corruption, and is made up of a dull colour palette, however healing the Fertile Grounds destroys the squirming black slime that is oh so eager to absorb you, and colour and life is restored to the land; tall green grass waves gently in the breeze, waterfalls spill from steep cliff faces casting rainbows, and the sky becomes a cloudless blue sea. The thought of seeing the areas returning to their former glory spurred me on. The vast draw distance adds to the magnificence of it all - reach a high enough point and you can see almost the entire world. At one point, in my search for the remaining Light Seeds (Prince of Persia’s collectibles) I saw one in another part of the land from an astonishingly long distance away, and, after some platforming, there it was waiting for me.

What hasn't changed is the Prince's super-human acrobatic abilities, with jumping, and swinging, and pole traversal found in abundance, as well as the return of wall running, along with the introduction of the even more ridiculous/awesome ceiling running, which allows the Prince to scamper upside-down along horizontal surfaces. In spite of the Prince's antics the animations are very believable and blend so fluidly together it is very rarely you notice that there are actually many different animations being performed, instead of just one long one.

With the Sands of Time's Time Reversal ability nowhere to be seen, you may be wondering what happens when you mess up your platforming. Well, guess what? You cannot die. While this may sound odd at first, it actually makes a lot of sense - if you leap to your doom, Elika saves you and places you back on the last solid platform you were on, or if you are about to be struck down in battle, Elika will protect you. Amazingly, this system works very well, punishing you enough for making silly errors, whilst not forcing you to reload the last checkpoint. It also strengthens your trust in your new ally, which allows you to become better attached to the story.

The combat system has been completely revamped this time around and finally Prince of Persia has a combat system on par with its platforming. Rather than aimless button mashing, Prince of Persia encourages you to watch and react, chaining the four basic techniques (sword attack, acrobatic action, Elika attack and gauntlet attack) to form devastating combos, which are very satisfying to pull off and have a crunching effectiveness to them. If you’re not into the fighting, most battles (that aren’t boss battles) can be avoided by simply striking at a spawning enemy, allowing you to choose how you want to play the game. Oddly, the Prince actually moves quicker when guarding, but there isn’t any real problem with this as keeping your guard up during battle is a sensible decision.

The musical score throughout perfectly complements the game’s visuals, ranging from dark and ominous to joyful and happy, depending on where you are and what's happening around you.

Some nice little Easter eggs show us that Ubisoft hasn’t forgotten the other excellent games they produce: there’s a reference to Assassin’s Creed in one of the trophies, and the different costumes take this even further, with one allowing you to become Altair, and another allowing Elika’s model to be replaced with a cel-shaded version of Beyond Good & Evil’s Jade, which I was very pleased to see, as this is one of my favourite games of all time.

Good news for trophy hunters too: Prince of Persia has a very full trophy list of over 50 trophies, and they are all very manageable too. I've got the platinum for this game now, and I can't say I regretted one moment of the play time I spent in order to secure the final trophies.

Of course, despite all this praise, Prince of Persia is not, unfortunately, perfect.

The Wings of Ormadz power, which allows you to fly around, isn't as good as it sounds - the flying is completely on rails and simply allows you to move within the screen area out of the way of obstacles. Judging the position of these obstacles can sometimes be difficult and the moving, swirling overlay during the flight is very obtrusive.

Similarly, the Breath of Ormadz power, which allows you to run along vertical surfaces between Power Plates, suffers from camera issues, and often you'll run head long into a wall. This wouldn’t be an issue if it wasn’t for the extremely lengthy periods without a break that the game forces you to use this power for, meaning that you will end up repeating routes over and over in order to memorise the layout of obstacles.

Additionally, some people won’t like how forgiving the game is, but most importantly, the game is a lot of fun to play and is a consistently exhilarating experience, never letting up throughout its 10+ hour story.

Overall, a brilliant new Prince of Persia experience, in glorious cel-shaded HD, adds to the series’ infallible acrobatic platforming and has some excellent combat mechanics, but falls short slightly on a few of the power-ups and may be just a little too forgiving for some.